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GREETINGS, EARTHLINGS,
I moved to Gondwana some years ago to study a population of very large apes, the Gorilla Gorilla Gonduanensis or Vanamnara, that live peacefully in the tropical rainforest. Nothing suggested that this would lead to my becoming Foreign Minister of the land and, if anyone had predicted this at the time, I would have asked : “ why not President of the Moon ? ”
There was also another motive for my move : the world I left behind me, the world of my childhood and youth, was chaotic, brutal, senseless, grim and often hideously depressing. It had given me nothing to live for really and, one day when I was twenty-three, I turned my back on everything I'd ever known and began packing my bags in pretty much the same state of mind in which some other man might have chosen to jump off a cliff.
Over the past couple of years, however, much has changed. I've traveled through Gondwana, discovered the land, its fearful recent history and sometimes truly unbelievable natural phenomena, gradually realizing that all of this had given me a clue to the causes of the distress from which I'd run away. The grim, senseless and depressing mood of my world, I realized, was largely a consequence of a rash decision taken over a hundred years ago by the Colonial Authorities, which had deprived us, ever since, of something that most of us no longer recall.
But I'll come to that later.
The world has much to learn from Gondwana, the famed Third Hemisphere of Antiquity and this website should gradually help dispel the sort of ignorance and forgetfulness, so cheerfully attested in a recent headline in the Daily Mail. The article reported Gondwana's unexpected return to the concert of nations and the memorable headline declared that :
I most heartily thank Friends of the Greater Dream for giving their generous support to the splendid and infinitely resourceful land that I have the rather unexpected pleasure of representing.
Padraic Lonternough
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